Thursday, January 20, 2011

The freakiest thing in SL is not that you can fly, that your neighbor is a werewolf, or that men sometimes refer to you as "hun."

No, the freakiest thing is the SL time warp. In Second Life, a conversation can take all night, marriages can begin and end in a week, and at four years old, you are no longer young, you are middle aged.

It is really hard to explain, but those who have experienced it know that what I'm saying is true. Time passes both eerily fast and amazingly slowly once you log in. I know people who have met, fallen in love and gotten engaged overnight. Relationships tend to end as quickly, probably due to do the ease with which you may extricate yourself from an unpleasant situation. But I digress. The thing is, the speed at which these relationships form is rarely actually felt by either party. They seem to experience it in slow motion.

I've experienced the SLTW when I am doing something as simple as changing my outfit. This simple task, seemingly taking place in minutes, can in reality suck down hours of your time, especially if you are doing it in the evening. You find yourself, more often than not, logging out at two AM, wondering how that happened...again.

So I decided to invest in a little tool called "Time Out." You can download it at http://www.dejal.com/timeout/

It is a "Break reminder tool with micro-breaks" according to the company. It is for Macs only, and it is very cool. It literally dims your computer monitor at designated intervals (I set mine up for 20 minutes), reminding you, visually, to get up, stretch, eat, go to the bathroom, whatever, but GET UP.

I was amazed and excited ...initially. I would get up, stretch, etc. But then, inevitably, I started hitting the snooze button. And eventually, yes, I turned it off completely. I just couldn't take the pressure.

Still it is a very good tool for those who need an extra boot to get off the box.